The other evening I headed off to Grieco's in Brielle, which is that place with the big beer sign on Route 35 south just before you get to the bridge to Point Pleasant.

I picked up a couple of those $3.99 six-packs they sell. These are made up of whatever beer is left intact after cartons break and other assorted stragglers.

It's a great way to get a variety of beer at a bargain price. The six-packs I bought contained a couple Anchor summer ales, a Grolsch or two (always drinkable), a Harp, a couple of light beers (which I give away to other people who can drink them), a Shiner Double Wheat and two Guinnesses.

Interestingly, one of the Guinesses was something I've never seen before on this side of the pond. Most Guinness is relatively low in alcohol, despite misperceptions to the contrary. But this was a "Foreign Export" Guinness. The label showed it to contain 7.5 percent alcohol.

This reminded me of a time I was visiting London. I passed a store that had a sign advertising "Nigerian Guinness." I wondered why the heck they'd be importing Guinness from Africa so I went in and asked.

It turned out that this was Guinness prepared for export to Africa. It was therefore much stronger than the Guinness consumed in England. When I tried it, I found it to be much better than a regular Guinness.

The same was true for this bottle of "Foreign Export" Guinness. A standard Guinness tastes watery by comparison. The sad truth is, most Guinness Stout is not very stout. Stout needs a higher alcohol content than what you get in regular Guinness. That level has more to do with British and Irish tax laws than with any concerns about taste.

The collection also included a Magic Hat Black Lager. I'm not a fan of Magic Hat. This lager showed why. It didn't have half the flavor of the dark lager brewed up by the local boys. I'm talking about Beach Haus Winter Rental.

I picked up a bunch of them in prior cheap six-packs. I guess people stop buying winter beer once winter's over, but the Beach Haus is perfectly drinkable in spring.

And then there's the e-mail I got about how beer led to the liberation of Holland and the creation of Belgium